Things that Virtua Fighter 5 Ultimate Showdown got RIGHT

• The conversion to the Dragon engine was masterful and extraordinary
• The lighting and materials presentation is stunning
• The animations in the Dragon engine remains breath taking.
• Dural's stage is goregous
• The new game intro is spot on
• The Yakuza DLC rocks
• The new Octagon stage is a huge improvement over VF5FS its fabulous.

 

Good post. I agree that they got those things right.

So what do you guys think of the Tekken dlc costumes that was announced recently? Do you think that was a right move? I noticed alot of people are mixed over this.

 

I think there is a licensing cost to using guest characters from other games. That might be one issue. But Sega could easily dig deeper into the Yakuza, Judgment, and Shenmue series for characters to permanently add to the game. But as far as guest characters: DOA's Mila, Eliot, Rig. Bayman, and Helena would make a good fit for guest characters in the game. DOA and VF have a more compatible style that VF and Tekken. DOA x VF5US or VF6 x DOA would work. VF definitely needs a Wing Chun or
Bak Mei character.

 

Don't tell me you'd hate seeing Joe Musashi or Shiva show up in VF

Yeah I will admit that was a bit baffling to me too, my guess is Sega figured crossing over with Tekken would draw more attention than a Streets of Rage costume pack.

I really want a Street of Rage costume pack

 

- Love the aesthetic of the ui/menu : the dual red and blue design is elegant, and and i really like the new health bar (more detailed in game than you could though seeing in the first trailer)

- The fix of the side counter indication (purple). It's more easy as a viewer to see what is going on and as player when you do right or wrong.

- I like how quicking is the loading of the menus and the vs screen (years lights ahead Tekken 7/ Street fighter 5 ones)

- The lobby and options in general : league battles, tournaments and team battles).

- I love the titles and the mini quests in there to get them.

- The musics are awesome and match the quality of the whole VF5 saga tracks which are by far the best for me in the whole serie. (Dural Theme is very smart and cool)

- The tournament mode is awesome :
When the servers work corectly, everything does pretty fine and it's actually a beauty to see how the program shakes randomly people during the final step of the set up ^^ Quite impressive for a beta.

I think many people who'd love that especially as definitive characters in VF6 like SF did with Final Fight (Cody, Guy, etc.)

 

VF5US got right:

- Fast load times
- VF TV at the main menu
- Tutorial
- Practice will waiting for an online ranked match
- Presentation
- DLC pulling from VF's past and other Sega IP
- Being able to play simultaneous matches in Leaue matches. Made everything smoother when people can play their matches without having to wait.
- Emojis and pre-set dialouge options for online.

 

If that happens in VF6, I am burning Sega to the fucking ground lmao

The only positive thing I can say about US is the backgrounds look pretty nice. I still prefer the FS aesthetic overall though.

 

One thing I will say is I'm surprised Sega hasn't done a new Fighters Megamix. They've got more than enough characters, I'm guessing they think it's not profitable maybe?

 

To be honest, I agree with MadeMan. Though I like Helena's and Mila's and others fighting styles, especially Helena's Pi Qua Quan, which could easily fit in VF, I've said this about a few times before, I am literally like kinda sick and tired, of the whole guest characters in fighting games. Like literally.

If you can spend a ton of money, paying another game company, to have their character in your fighting game, or spend hours or days, doing business negociations with other gaming companies, to put their character in your fighting game (and unfortunately, make their characters, become more popular than yours), then why not take the cheaper economical route, and use that time, energy and money, to pay your staff to make more original, yet cooler characters for your fighting game? It doesn't take a genius, to figure out or realise that.

Also, I'm kinda sick and tired of the excuse/trend/false trend belief, propagated by big-time youtubers and gaming press influencers, and on other fgc gaming forums, that fighting games need guest characters, nerf patches, and basic game play to survive. Who the heck started that silly false belief? Like Jebus Cripes dude. Lol!

 

Because companies know that a guest character from a popular franchise is going to create more hype and more sales for their game than a new character.

Take MK11 as an example;

How crazy did people get over the Kollector when he was revealed as a brand new character? Compare that to Spawns reveal or Robocop, it doesn't come anywhere close.

Guest characters are going to become more and more frequent I think, they create hype within the communities and clearly help to sell the game they're apart of.

There's plenty of examples of awesome new characters, but they'll always play second fiddle to guests. The only way this will stop being a thing is if people stop buying said games with said guest characters.

And that's not going to happen anytime soon.

 

- The jump to Dragon engine is surprisingly very well done and serves as a step to the next iteration. I think the engine got it and it looks better than it would have been on Unreal. MK doesn't count since NRS heavily modified their engine it's not Unreal anymore.


- They have finally fuckin established communication line on Twitter peeps. Aoki and their VF account tweet again and in English a lot. This is probably their greatest achievement.

- Very sega vibe in running the whole game... DLC is well managed and it seems that there is honest effort here to bring back the IP.


Now, they need to really bust their butts and invent with VF6 especially now given SF6 seems to be ousting some boundaries. AM2 has rock solid history and past and they need to hold their grounds.

 

I would really like to see Shiva in VF. He's a great design with the most stylish moves in Streets of Rage. It's how they play and are implemented that matters more than the fact that they are a guest. Street Fighter have done it again and again with Final Fight and now Rival Schools and they've been incorporated really well.

 

Definitely the load times--this game loads QUICKLY, especially in between matches.

Also, making the game free-to-play for owners of PS+ the month it was released was a nice choice; it definitely inspired me to pick up the game and made me a fan.

Also, frame data is in the game and not sold separately.

 

Let's see:

-Graphics, Dragon engine is great even if there are some jaggies
-New stages redesign, waaaay better than Final Showdown and more in line with VF5 vanilla greatness.
-Music selection, the new base OST is also better than FS in my opinion
-CG intro, one of the best
-VFTV screen on main menu
-Online functionalities, very complete
-No season pass junk, all roster is there from D1
-NO DLC characters, finally!
-gameplay remained the same luckly (even if FS was already too much juggle-friendly for my tastes).

 

Things that VF5 US did right, sega having lots of small tournament events in Japan, like they used to do in the 90's, and having a Japanese VF youtube channel. Smart moves on their part.

 

Debuting on PS+ was really generous from Sega.